Father starts off again.

“Wait a minute—­this is wrong,” cried Eleseus.  Ho, Eleseus standing there with the drawing in his hand, with the Law in his hand; no getting away from him!  “That spring there goes outside,” he says to his father.

“Ay, what then?”

“Why, you’ve got it in under, you’ve set it wrong.  It’s a steel spring, and you have to fix it outside, else the bolt jars out again and stops the knives.  You can see in the picture here.”

“I’ve left my spectacles behind, and can’t see it quite,” says his father, something meekly.  “You can see better—­you set it as it should go.  I don’t want to go up to the house for my spectacles now.”

All in order now, and Isak gets up.  Eleseus calls after him:  “You must drive pretty fast, it cuts better that way—­it says so here.”

Isak drives and drives, and everything goes well, and Brrr! says the machine.  There is a broad track of cut grass in his wake, neatly in line, ready to take up.  Now they can see him from the house, and all the womenfolk come out; Inger carries little Rebecca on her arm, though little Rebecca has learned to walk by herself long since.  But there they come—­four womenfolk, big and small—­hurrying with straining eyes down towards the miracle, flocking down to see.  Oh, but now is Isak’s hour.  Now he is truly proud, a mighty man, sitting high aloft dressed in holiday clothes, in all his finery; in jacket and hat, though the sweat is pouring off him.  He swings round in four big angles, goes over a good bit of ground, swings round, drives, cuts grass, passes along by where the women are standing; they are dumbfounded, it is all beyond them, and Brrr! says the machine.

Then Isak stops and gets down.  Longing, no doubt, to hear what these folk on earth down there will say; what they will find to say about it all.  He hears smothered cries; they fear to disturb him, these beings on earth, in his lordly work, but they turn to one another with awed questionings, and he hears what they say.  And now, that he may be a kind and fatherly lord and ruler to them all, to encourage them, he says:  “There, I’ll just do this bit, and you can spread it tomorrow.”

“Haven’t you time to come in and have a bite of food?” says Inger, all overwhelmed.

“Nay, I’ve other things to do,” he answers.

Then he oils the machine again; gives them to understand that he is occupied with scientific work.  Drives off again, cutting more grass.  And, at long last, the womenfolk go back home.

Happy Isak—­happy folk at Sellanraa!

Very soon the neighbours from below will be coming up.  Axel Stroem is interested in things, he may be up tomorrow.  But Brede from Breidablik, he might be here that very evening.  Isak would not be loth to show them his machine, explain it to them, tell them how it works, and all about it.  He can point out how that no man with a scythe could ever cut so fine and clean.  But it costs money, of course—­oh, a red-and-blue machine like that is a terribly costly thing!